This week it is one of the biggest festivals in the world, Glastonbury, which will command all the column inches and television coverage.

Now in its 43rd year, The Rolling Stones are the festival headliners along with Arctic Monkeys.

Glastonbury caters for a punter’s every need, with a bewildering array of stages, music, in fact everything a festival head could possibly desire.

This year at home, we seem to have a heap of ‘boutique’ events happening.

These are now even being billed as ‘Music and Food Festivals’, and this weekend, all roads lead West! – Well, actually Westport House in Co Mayo, for an interesting line-up that includes Elvis Costello, inset, and The Imposters, Christy Moore, Blind Boys of Alabama, and, a band who released one of the great pop debut albums of the 80s – The Lexicon of Love – ABC.

The Comedy tent features the likes of Reginald D. Hunter, Barry Murphy, and Phil Jupitus. The Chef’s kitchen(!), will include cooking from the likes of Derry Clarke, Richard Corrigan, and Dylan McGrath.

I reckon it offers a lot for the price of a ticket, and is very much the way festivals need to be these days to attract people to part with their hard-earned few bob!

Back in Dublin, this Saturday sees the return of Rod Stewart with his Live the Life tour at the RDS.

Rod is still rocking at the age of 68, and has he mellowed?

The past few years have seen him doing albums of covers, The Great American Songbook series, and after Rod wrote his autobiography, he found the impetus to write songs again.

The result was Time an album of original songs, and it gave him his first number one studio album since A Night on the Town in 1976!